r/whittling

6inch tall 2x2 block, hand carved, fonished with black walnut Danish oil and wax.

I wanted to try a new type of wood for some time. Apart from the random branches I found out there, I mostly used basswood. My wife gifted me some pear wood which has a beautiful pink/brown/red color, very fine and uniform grain. Much harder to carve than the basswood but it allowed for much more precise cuts.

For the whales, I followed the great guide from Doug Linker. As usual my carvings tend to be quite chunky and fat 🙈.

Pretty happy with him, especially the face since it’s the first one that wasn’t just two dots and a line.

He’s not completely finished since I want him to have a cigarette in his mouth, but I’m not sure yet how to stick it in there.

A few questions:
Anything you’d add/change?
What do you use too glue something on?
How do you cut holes/gaps like the one between his legs? This one was a pain since it’s not wide enough to get my knife in sideways.
How would you finish him? At the moment I only have some colors and beeswax paste, that came in a whittling set.

First time whittling I used a cheese knife. Saw the idea of carving a mushroom from an avocado seed and decided to give it a go as my first whittle project. It was really fun. I am not sure what to try next I want to be able to do caricature and gnomes.

I carved a cheese wedge. For the Swiss cheese holes I used the newly modified bottle opener on my Swiss Army knife. This was a quick and fun project that can be done in less than an hour!

Funny how practice sessions or doodles can have a very interesting result. Reminds me to just start things and not think too much about it. Ironically I've been thinking about doing more caricatures, not sure what path to follow. Busts are cool but I rather have a full body piece to sell after

Three mushrooms for my first project. Literally just went for it, learning by doing. Would love any suggestions for clear areas of improvement/projects that would test skill on smaller details.

My son starts school tomorrow so I made this apple for him to paint and take to her.

Carved this from a block of wood based on my dog’s photo.
The cheeks and tiny tongue were the fun parts to work on.
Still have a lot to learn, but I really enjoyed the process.

It’s a little early, but I really had fun carving and painting this. Turned it into a magnet.

Extremely fun carve, albeit a challenge.

It didn't turn out very symmetrical, and the top part was tricky to do with just a knife.

Should I paint this horse I carved or just BLO it? If paint, which color? I would use acrylics.

Still playing around with designs for my chess set. i've got 8 dwarven pawns carved so far. i'm playing with the idea of what sizes I like for other pieces in the game, and how they'll work in actual play.

I need each piece to be readily identifiable as the piece in question. to have no one doubt, "this piece is the rook. or that piece is absolutely the bishop"

taking my time to do it right.

Pieces are 1.5 x 1.5 inch, 3 inches tall. Board has 2 inch squares.

Not quite done but this is day 2 maybe an hour or 2hours each day to get this far, still unsure of how to do the eyes.

Any advise is appreciated.

I picked up a beginners knife set a few months ago and have been meaning to post some of my first projects here ever since, so I figured I should finally do it before another few months go by.

I started with the spoon (which was already a blank that came with the knives), then jumped straight to the ball-in-cage and the chain, just kind of experimenting with new things. They’re definitely not perfect, but I’ve been having fun.

Everything here was carved by hand from basswood. Still very much a beginner, so feedback or suggestions for what to try next are welcome! (I’ve already started on a chess set using 1x1x6-inch blanks and will eventually make a separate post about it.)